VOA – The U.S. Navy said Tuesday it intercepted a shipment of assault rifles last week bound for Yemen that it believes came from Iran. A statement from the U.S. 5th Fleet said 2,116 AK-47 assault rifles were found on a fishing vessel in the Gulf of Oman that was traversing “a route historically used to traffic illicit cargo” to …

VOA – French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo doubled down on its ridicule of Iran’s religious rulers on Tuesday, with fresh cartoons of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, despite protests from Iran and its allies. “The mullahs aren’t happy. The caricatures of their supreme leader … do not seem to have made them laugh,” the paper’s editor, known as Riss, writes in the …

Iran-HRM – Mohammad Ghobadlou, a resident of Parand in Tehran, was born on January 1, 2001. He is one of the thousands of detainees of recent protests in Iran. The Iranian Judiciary sentenced him to death without Mohammad Ghobadlou’s right to an attorney. Mohammad Ghobadlou suffers from bipolar disorder; he was charged with murdering a police officer and injuring five …

CHRI – While the Islamic Republic has been gunning down and executing street protesters, it has also been arresting defense attorneys—at least 44 since September—to block their ability to seek justice for arbitrarily arrested activists and street protesters, according to research by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI). Meanwhile, detainees continue to be forced to use lawyers from a …

Al-Monitor – The office of Iran’s prosecutor-general issued a series of new directives Tuesday to the country’s police to act “decisively” against women who fail to comply with the country’s controversial hijab rules. The ISNA news agency quoted Deputy Prosecutor-General Abdolsamad Khorramabadi as saying that police will be obliged to arrest and hand over to the judiciary women who remove their headscarves …

Al-Arabia – A court in northern Iran has sentenced another man to death for participating in protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, state media reported on Tuesday. Javad Rouhi, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of the capital charge of “corruption on earth,” was a “leader” of protests in the city of Nowshahr where he is …

RFL/RE – An Iranian lawyer who reported on the torture of his client by security agents has been charged for saying so publicly. The activist HRANA news agency reported on January 8 that Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani was released on bail after being summoned to a court in Karaj to hear the charges against him.HRANA quoted an informed source as saying …

RFL/RE – The United States said on January 9 that Iran’s sale of lethal drones to Russia for use in its ongoing invasion of Ukraine means the country may be “contributing to widespread war crimes.” While it did not signal a policy shift, the charge marked some of the sharpest U.S. rhetoric against Iran since it began providing weapons to …

Iranwire – An Iranian court has sentenced prominent sports journalist Ehsan Pirbornash to 18 years in prison, his wife says, amid an intensifying clampdown on the media in the country. “Despite having a letter from the prison’s doctor stating that he is sick and could not tolerate imprisonment, and despite my husband’s innocence, Ehsan Pirbornash was sentenced today to 18 years in …

VOA – U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Tuesday Iran is violating international human rights law with its execution of people involved in protests. “The weaponization of criminal procedures to punish people for exercising their basic rights — such as those participating in or organizing demonstrations — amounts to state sanctioned killing,” Türk said in a statement. Iran has …